I Didn't See Haiti on the Map in the Plane, This Is What I Came to Tell You Today!
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 2 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
To Gotchen Bernard, Legba du Dimanche! Thank you for the light!
I didn't see Haiti on the map. And yet, I searched for a long time, stubbornly, as one searches for truth at the bottom of a labyrinth.
To understand what my eyes refused to grasp, I had to go back in my memory to the early 2000s, specifically 2004, when Christopher Wargny's book, Haiti Does Not Exist, ignited debates. Some found it a salutary provocation, others were offended, but since then, it must be acknowledged that 'Ti Mari has neither gone up nor come down': she remains frozen, marking time in a nagging immobility. Last Saturday was a difficult day. I was returning from Wichita, a city with no direct connections to Florida or New York, forcing the traveler to exhaust themselves with endless layovers. The heavy and stubborn Houston steak kept me awake throughout the flight to Fort Lauderdale. And in this forced wakefulness, my eyes watched. I saw Santo Domingo. But Haiti? No.
And yet, in a strange ambiguity, I glimpsed Port-de-Paix, I thought I could make out Jacmel and Jérémie, like mirages at the edge of memory. As if the country existed in chiaroscuro, in the fissure between the official map and the intimate map of hearts. Since then, questions haunt me. If Haiti does not exist, then in what blood do my veins circulate? For I walk, but emptiness dwells within me. I move forward, but without a voice to confide my astonishment to. Speech has died in the country, stifled by money that has colonized hearts and souls, while the spirit flees, exiled far from the ruins. One can say what one wants, but Haiti as it is today seems to be the breeding ground for all diseases, a body offered to a hundred wounds, a territory of accumulated pain. It has been fifteen months since I last saw it, and yet it dwells within me like an obsession. It haunts me, similar to this 'forty deseases,' this imaginary illness that the ghettos of Port-au-Prince once called karantiseyas. A nameless fever, made of longing and nostalgia, where reality merges with delirium. Haiti: invisible on official maps, but tattooed on the skin of my memory. Absent from the sky that planes fly over, but present in every sleepless night, in every heavy silence, in every broken dream still searching for its way. Yves Lafortune, Fort Lauderdale, September 23, 2025
To understand what my eyes refused to grasp, I had to go back in my memory to the early 2000s, specifically 2004, when Christopher Wargny's book, Haiti Does Not Exist, ignited debates. Some found it a salutary provocation, others were offended, but since then, it must be acknowledged that 'Ti Mari has neither gone up nor come down': she remains frozen, marking time in a nagging immobility. Last Saturday was a difficult day. I was returning from Wichita, a city with no direct connections to Florida or New York, forcing the traveler to exhaust themselves with endless layovers. The heavy and stubborn Houston steak kept me awake throughout the flight to Fort Lauderdale. And in this forced wakefulness, my eyes watched. I saw Santo Domingo. But Haiti? No.
And yet, in a strange ambiguity, I glimpsed Port-de-Paix, I thought I could make out Jacmel and Jérémie, like mirages at the edge of memory. As if the country existed in chiaroscuro, in the fissure between the official map and the intimate map of hearts. Since then, questions haunt me. If Haiti does not exist, then in what blood do my veins circulate? For I walk, but emptiness dwells within me. I move forward, but without a voice to confide my astonishment to. Speech has died in the country, stifled by money that has colonized hearts and souls, while the spirit flees, exiled far from the ruins. One can say what one wants, but Haiti as it is today seems to be the breeding ground for all diseases, a body offered to a hundred wounds, a territory of accumulated pain. It has been fifteen months since I last saw it, and yet it dwells within me like an obsession. It haunts me, similar to this 'forty deseases,' this imaginary illness that the ghettos of Port-au-Prince once called karantiseyas. A nameless fever, made of longing and nostalgia, where reality merges with delirium. Haiti: invisible on official maps, but tattooed on the skin of my memory. Absent from the sky that planes fly over, but present in every sleepless night, in every heavy silence, in every broken dream still searching for its way. Yves Lafortune, Fort Lauderdale, September 23, 2025
